Webber: An unusual musical passerby

Xinmin Weekly Chen Bing

Black leather suit, white shirt, casual trousers, Sir Weber’s dressing style is consistent The musical he created himself—

—is elegant and stylish.

Webber is here.

This Webber is not Chris Webber, the soul of the NBA Kings, nor is he the handsome man of the F1 Williams team.

Crick Webber, he is known as the "musical actor" "Father" Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

With the musical craze set off by "Phantom of the Opera" in Shanghai, Sir Webber, who missed Shanghai three times, finally appeared in Shanghai.

A man closely connected with musicals

This man closely connected with musicals, as early as 2001, through the "Weber Musical" held at the Shanghai Grand Theater

Grand Ceremony Concert", let people know this emotional and romantic musical creator. Due to travel arrangements at that time, Weber himself only appeared in Beijing and missed Shanghai.

After two years, during the performance of the musical "Cats" in Shanghai, Weber was very excited about the box office success created by "Cats" in Shanghai.

But unfortunately it was SARS at the time. , Weber once again lost the opportunity to visit Shanghai in person. This regret lasted until the premiere of "The Phantom of the Opera".

When "The Phantom of the Opera" premiered in Shanghai on December 18, 2004, it was Weber's new musical "The Woman in White"

and the film version of "The Phantom of the Opera" successively. When it came out, Weber had no choice but to be "unaffiliated" with Shanghai again.

So when Weber finished his trip to Japan and offered to go to Shanghai to "see it", not only the cast and crew of "Phantom of the Opera" were excited, but also There were a large number of media reporters - "This time I finally saw him alive!"

Webb was born in a musical family in London in 1948. His father was a piano professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and his mother was a violinist

, his grandfather is a tenor singer, and his younger brother is a well-known cellist today. He also has an aunt who is a drama actress.

When he was 11 years old, this aunt took Weber into the theater for the first time. After returning home, Weber made a small model of the theater.

From then on, he planted the seed to devote himself to theater. harbinger of.

It is said that Weber could compose music at the age of 7, but his childhood ambition was to be a historian. At the age of 16, Webber received a scholarship from Oxford University

The biggest gain in school was meeting Tim Rice, an Oxford law student who was 4 years older than him.

Realizing that Rice's outstanding lyrical talent and his own beautiful melodies might be a match made in heaven, Weber showed the decisive character that all outstanding people have. He did not hesitate to apply to drop out of school, and he and Rice Together they pursued their dream of musicals, and began a 12-year tacit collaboration between the two.

In 1968, the two created the musical "Joseph and His Miraculous Coat" based on the "Bible" and performed it in a school as an amateur performance. Unexpectedly, the stage There happened to be a theater critic sitting down who appreciated them and introduced this play to the general public.

The play appeared on the stage of the "West End", the base camp of British commercial dramas, without any warning. The two people who became an instant hit have been hit hard ever since - Weber composed the music, and Rice wrote the screenplay and lyrics.

In 1971, Weber and Rice set out to create a new musical with a religious theme. This was the rock musical "Jesus Jealous of Superstars" which premiered on Broadway

》. In this play, they boldly challenge religious authority and compare Jesus to a 1960s rock star who was blindly worshiped and followed in reality. They create a Jesus who also questions God, and more

It provides an eye-popping "innovative" interpretation of the relationship between Jesus and Judas and the emotional world of Jesus.

Of course

this setting triggered widespread protests from religious groups, and the protests actually became "free publicity" for the play, making the play more and more popular.

Just when people were eagerly anticipating more masterpieces from the combination of Weber and Rice, the collaboration between the two was unsustainable. Rice felt that the praise received by Weber was very unfair. He felt that his lyrical achievements had not received the recognition he deserved, so he was dissatisfied and went away deeply. In 1980, Rice rejected Weber's invitation to collaborate on "Aspects of Love", and "Evita" based on the life of Mrs. Peron in Argentina became the final work of their collaboration.

Losing his talented lyricist partner, Weber turned his attention to T.S. Eliot's poems, "Cats" which also set the record for the longest running performance in London

the West End and Broadway. 》came into being. Since then, he has successively released new works "Song, Dance, Shadows

" and "Starlight Express". Thanks to successful commercial operations, these two plays have done well at the box office, but they cannot be regarded as Weber's

A successful work. Later, when people mentioned Weber during this period, they were always talking about his extramarital affair with Sarah Brightman. Even in Shanghai, such problems were still unavoidable.

Love has come

Everyone says that "The Phantom of the Opera" is the pinnacle of the relationship between Weber and Sarah. Weber himself did not admit or deny it in Shanghai. Except for Weber and Sarah, no one knows why their legendary love still couldn't survive the "seven-year itch", but love has really come.

In 1981, Weber was already a high-profile star of hope in London's West End, the center of world musicals, while Sarah was just

a little-known song and dance actress. She applied for "Cats", "Britain's first dance musical", and Weber selected her

not only in work, but also in life.

Sarah received critical acclaim for her important role in "Cats" and quickly rose to prominence, while Weber found

new creative inspiration in Sarah. Weber married Sarah on his birthday in 1984. Coincidentally, the names of their original spouses are Sarah and Andrew respectively.

Webb, who is intoxicated in love, is determined to create a musical tailor-made for Brightman, who has a heavenly singing voice, to elevate her to the throne of

the queen of musicals. In this way, French writer Gaston Lehou's horror novel "The Phantom of the Opera" became Weber's first choice.

The premiere of "The Phantom of the Opera" in London was extremely successful. Almost overnight, this work became a new symbol of London musicals

On Broadway in New York, it became the symbol of world musicals. Another major center, the play immediately became the best-selling work.

In "The Phantom of the Opera", which combines classical opera, pop music and rock music, Sarah fully demonstrates her outstanding opera singing in the high range

and her popularity in the middle and low ranges. With her singing skills, she became the undisputed number one actress in musicals and reached the pinnacle of her career. Many people say that Sarah is "a woman who follows her husband" and is full of utilitarianism in this love. If there is no real emotion,

Weber would not be able to write such a beautiful melody, and Sarah would not be able to sing such an extraordinary high note. From this point of view alone, love is true

has come before.

The musical theater industry has never given Sarah the honor she deserves. The greatest honor that "Phantom of the Opera" brought her was actually a cross-border Grammy award on the other side of the ocean. Newcomer to the classical genre. The confident and independent Sarah can no longer endure the repetition of the old tune of "women follow their husbands

" year after year. In addition, the two's new collaboration-the musical "Perspectives of Love" has received poor response. Good, "It's time

to say goodbye".

The product of the breakup is no longer music, but the 6 million settlement allowance that Weber gave Sarah.

After the breakup, the reputation or career of the two of them

was not greatly affected. Weber was knighted by the Queen of England in 1992, and was awarded a lifelong Lord again at the end of 1996. Brightman became a famous crossover queen.

Although in recent years, thanks to the effective commercial operation of really good companies, Weber's works have achieved quite good box office revenue, but after entering the 1990s, Weber has not been able to compete with the 70s and 80s. In the 1900s, masterpieces comparable to "Evita", "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera" were released. Weber himself had to face this reality - middle-aged and elderly people in Europe and America are already enjoying his "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera" repeatedly. Weber hopes that more young people will join in the appreciation and production of musicals. "Musicals

need more young blood."

Although the trip to Shanghai was quite short, the hot musical market in Shanghai still made Jazz Weber happy. Since "Phantom of the Opera" was performed for more than a month, Shanghai audiences have been flocking to it, and 80% of the tickets for the performance before March 1 have been sold. There is also an endless stream of foreign audiences, coming from Beijing, Chongqing, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Harbin, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places.

The Shanghai Grand Theater convinced Weber with its box office, and the two parties will work together to create a localized musical. The Grand Theater wants to rely on Weber's "golden brand" to create a classic musical project with Chinese elements, but Weber is not a savior and wants to develop musical production and production in China. In a soil where consumption is relatively "poor", building a local musical industry may be a somewhat distant dream

?